This week, let me share with you a (French speaking) presentation about being a musician in the digital age. Enjoy.

Artist: Adam de la Mare

It was in the news today, Myspace is laying off 500 employees, nearly half of its staff. That's quite rough, although predictable. The platform already had a major round of layoffs in mid-2009 and face an uncertain future. One must remember that News Corp. bought it for US$580 million in mid-2005, so the thing has to bring back money.

And there we are. The once leading social media site has lost the mainstream fight. Everybody is facebooking, tweeting, tumbling, youtubing or instagraming nowadays. Myspace changed its logo recently and no one cared. Lame. The platform has been deemed ageing, useless, conservative, clueless and mainstream. Even in the music world, bands are now using other ways, such as bandcamp, soundcloud or big cartel to store and share their tracks (these platforms will be covered in later posts).

More and more, artists or bands ask me if it's still worth to keep their myspace accounts up to date ("it takes time", "the new interface is not friendly", "I prefer Facebook", etc.). Time being a scarce resource, the question is worthy.

However, as Michael Doernberg - CEO of Reverbnation - says : "MySpace is still the de facto music destination on the web. If you want to go to single place to see a comprehensive presentation of a band, MySpace is still the biggest." Just think about it. What do you do (maybe not if you're a scene insider) to give ear to a band or artist? And, more importantly maybe, what do bookers, festivals and clubs artistic directors, radio DJs or journalists do in order to get quick and dirty information and sounds about prospects? They go "band name" and "myspace" on Google. As simple as that. They do that for four reasons :

1. one is never sure to get songs in a simple and clear way on an artist's website


2. there is a lot less artists on the other above mentioned platforms


3. you don't go 1 + 2, given all the uncertainties (and given you've got 100+ bands or artists to review), if you can go Myspace instead


4. and then, if you like what you found in 3, you digg and go 1 and 2 

In short, keeping an updated profile and using it as an entry door to your other online presences is still a savvy time investment.